Fan Club
| Synonyms: | |
| See also: | Estrogen Brigade, Anime Club |
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A fan club can be any group of two or more fans who band together to form a club based on their shared interest. The term is usually applied to groups dedicated to a specific fandom or sub-genre. A less specific group devoted to speculative fiction in general is usually referred to as a science fiction club.
Television producers sometimes create "official" fan clubs for particular television shows, clubs that are run for profit. Some official fan clubs are run by fans and are not for profit. And some fan clubs, also run by fans, are completely unofficial.
Possible activities depend on the size of the club, the age of its members, and the fannish focus, but may include viewing parties, producing clubzines, attending conventions, organizing conventions, etc.
Some fan clubs do not use the word fan club, and go with titles such as "Society" (an example: The Oregon Dark Shadows Society), "Appreciation Society" (an example: The Paul Darrow Appreciation Society), "Fellowship" (an example: William Shatner Fellowship), and "Fan Association" (an example: The Landau/Bain Fan Association).
Some fandoms also created their own titles for their fan communities. Some examples are:
- Abbey (Deryni)
- Alliance for Star Wars Fans
- Cavern (Beauty and the Beast (TV))
- Darkover Council or "Towers" (Darkover)
- Enclave (Star Wars)
- Estrogen Brigade (multiple fandoms such as X-Files and Star Trek)
- Holt (Elfquest)
- Householding (Sime~Gen)
- Smial (Tolkien)
- "Starship," such as U.S.S. Vigilant and U.S.S. Atreides (some associated with STARFLEET: The International Star Trek Fan Association, Inc.) (Star Trek)
- Weyr (Dragonriders of Pern)
A Fan Club President Describes Her Duties
From Now Voyager, The Official Newsletter of the Kate Mulgrew Appreciation Society:
People seem to be under the impression that running a fan club is a glamorous job. After all, we get fabulous perks, right? We get inside gossip before anyone else does, we get to have intimate meetings with the stars and power lunches with the producers, we can call celebrities up at home whenever we want, we have collections of rare items that we got for free, we attend cons without paying and get set tours and publicists call us constantly to keep us updated on what the stars are doing, plus we get to make friends all over the world... Actually, none of the above is true except the part about making friends. And on bad days, we even doubt whether any of those friendships would last if our honoree disappeared. Sorry to disillusion anyone, but running a fan club consists mostly of paperwork, going to the bank, calling convention organizers to find out if they actually have actors booked for various cons they're advertising them for. We don't get any more "insider gossip" than people who read spoiler folders online. We turn over any memorabilia we get for club auctions and things like that. Many of us have never been to the studio; we certainly haven't met with the producers. The degree of actual contact with the honoree of a fan club varies, but I don't know anyone who runs a fan club who has late-night intimate phone conversations with a celebrity, and I'd seriously worry about a fan club president who was doing the job in hopes of getting candlelight dinners out of it. We do this because we get to meet fascinating people from all walks of life, and the Trek community is a lot of fun. Sometimes we're subjected to nasty comments and petty jealousies from people who have no idea how much work actually goes into running a fan club, and sometimes we merely get criticized for not doing enough--not getting news out fast enough, not having information people want, not catching every typo or grammatical error in our newsletters. Believe me, the amount of work we put in doesn't come close to the so-called perks." [1]
Exchange Policy
Many fan clubs had "exchange policies" with other fan clubs. This meant that they set up informal agreements to advertise each other's clubs and club publications in each other's newsletters.
Many fan clubs also sent each other complimentary copies of their newsletters to other fan clubs as a courtesy, and also in hopes their newsletters and other zines would be publicly reviewed.
Further Reading/Meta
- effect of commercialisation and direct intervention by the owners of intellectual copyright : a case study : the Australian Star Trek fan community, Archived version, by Susan P. Batho (2009) (an academic paper which studies the effect of the Viacom Crackdown and Australian fan clubs)
- It is better to give... A look at fandoms and their relationships with charities, Archived version by Karen Ann Yost (1994) (focus on fan clubs)
References
- ^ The editor admits that "much of this column is plagiarized from an article by Pam Buickel in the most recent Flight Log, the newsletter of Robert Duncan McNeill's fan club RanDoM Flight." [1]